On Place de la Concorde, the French Revolution had Louis XVI executed. On 26 September, 233 years later, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass in the same square. The crowd stretched up the Champs-Élysées in glorious autumn weather. During the Mass, priests distributed Communion along the Champs-Élysées, identifiable by their white umbrellas. Several priests also heard confessions out in the street. The Vatican estimated that around 800,000 people took part. In the midst of secular Paris, the country’s Christian roots became visible on a scale no one could overlook.
### The Church’s eldest daughter
The contrasts are striking: Two years ago, Paris presented itself to the world during the Olympics. A segment of the opening ceremony imitated the Last Supper of Jesus, but replaced the sacred motif with tasteless and vulgar scenes. The organisers said that this had not been the intention and apologised that people had felt offended. For those who recognised the image, the explanation made little difference. Paris appeared as a decadent and godless place, devoid of Christian life.
At the weekend, Paris was once again the setting for a public religious spectacle. This time, a pope stood at the altar, while hundreds of thousands had come to take part in the Mass.
France is called the Church’s eldest daughter. The country has also lived through a revolution that waged war against the Church: Priests and nuns were executed, monasteries closed and the Church’s place in society attacked. Later, the separation of church and state was enshrined in law through laïcité, the French principle of a secular state. A four-day papal visit naturally cannot erase this difficult relationship with the country’s Christian history. Nevertheless, when [the Pope spoke from Concorde](https://press.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/fr/homilies/2026/documents/20260926-francia-messa-parigi.html) to a sea of French people, he prayed:
> From this beautiful city of Paris, I fervently pray that the living water of the Holy Spirit may flow out over all of France.
And for a few days at least, it seemed that the prayer was in the process of being answered.
### Challenged Macron
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris reopened in 2024 after it burned on 15 April 2019. During his visit, Pope Leo [described](https://press.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/fr/speeches/2026/september/documents/20260925-francia-autorita.html) the reopening as ‘a symbol of hope rediscovered’. The cathedral showed, he said, that what was thought to have been lost can be raised up again. He was speaking about a building. The words could also be heard as an expression of hope for the life of faith in France.
With Macron sitting somewhat ill at ease up by the podium, Leo XIV emphasised that France has deep Christian roots. He then challenged the notion that laïcité requires Christianity to withdraw from public life:
> ‘A Christian who engages in public life’, he said, cannot for that reason ‘be regarded as a proselytiser or a threat to the unity of the fatherland’.
And further:
> ‘A properly understood secularism does not consist in excluding religion from the public sphere or from education.’
These were words addressed to a president, spoken in the Republic’s own stronghold, the Élysée Palace. Leo also reminded Macron of something the president himself said to the French bishops in [2018](https://press.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/fr/speeches/2026/september/documents/20260925-francia-autorita.html): A president who claims that the Church and Catholics are of no concern to him ‘would be neglecting his duty’.
### New shoots from old roots?
The figures make the Pope’s words something more than ceremonial speeches for a small group of believers. The French [Bishops’ Conference reported](https://eglise.catholique.fr/approfondir-sa-foi/la-celebration-de-la-foi/les-sacrements/le-bapteme/baptemes-adultes) that more than 13,000 adults and more than 8,000 young people came forward to be baptised in 2026. The figures tell of people seeking the faith here and now, many of them young. Pope Leo XIV naturally knows this and addressed families, young people and those preparing for baptism in particular. Young people, [he said](https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/fr/homilies/2026/documents/20260926-francia-messa-parigi.html), are ‘the Church of today’. And [to the bishops in Lourdes](https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/fr/speeches/2026/september/documents/20260927-francia-vescovi-cef.html) came the exhortation: ‘Rise, therefore, with hope, and do not tire of proclaiming the Gospel!’
Has France begun to return to its roots? No crowd alone can answer that question. But in the square where the Revolution executed the king, hundreds of thousands gathered around the Mass. In a country often spoken of as though Christianity belonged in museums, the faith was alive, public and impossible to overlook.
